July 15th, 2019

Steam Release Date: 23 May, 2014

Killer is Dead Spoiler: Rain falls in a dim alley as two figures confront one another. Tokio, a deranged criminal whose right arm has been replaced with an automatic weapon, identifies the other man as an "executioner." This man stalks Tokio down the alley, effortlessly reflecting a flurry of gunshots using a katana. When he exits the alley, Tokio ambushes and seemingly kills his pursuer. Tokio's relief is cut short when the man silently rises and hacks away his firearm limb. Bleeding out at the bottom of the alley, Tokio realizes that his opponent is aligned with "the darkness," and with that the man slices off Tokio's head. A purple aura rises from the body and coats the Moon above. Two years later, Mondo Zappa's morning begins with a letter of acceptance into the office of Bryan Roses, whose government-sanctioned organization employs hitmen to execute villains across the globe. Zappa's roommate, Mika Takekawa, is disappointed that her request has been denied, but cheers up when Zappa offers Takekawa a position as his assistant. Zappa and Takekawa meet with Roses and his colleague Vivienne Squall, who is initially hard on the pair. After a brief explanation of how the office functions, the group welcomes its latest client, an artist named Robert who claims an arthropod is responsible for a series of recent disappearances in his area. Robert signs a contract for the execution of this monster, and Vivienne dispatches Zappa and Takekawa on their first hunt. Inside the client's house Zappa discovers not Robert but a woman named Alisa, whose older sister Alice has not been herself since being tricked by "a scary-looking man." The client's house morphs into a caricature of the popular tale of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as Zappa rummages the site for Alisa's sister. When Zappa does find Alice, he realizes she is actually the owner of the house and that all along she has been posing as Alisa. She begins complaining of back pains, which have plagued her since returning from a visit to the Moon. This piques Zappa's interest and he presses her for the name of the man she encountered there. Her pain grows as she tries to remember but she soon recalls the "scary-looking man" as David. Alice's back pain climaxes as her body erupts in a flurry of blood; she appears to levitate upside-down as her neck snaps her face rightside-up. Looking into Zappa's eyes, Alice asks if she is a tortured soul, as he gazes on the arthropod horror her body has mutated into. Knowing now that Alice is the monster described by Robert, Zappa is forced to kill her. When Zappa delivers his client Alice's head, to everyone's surprise Robert identifies her as the woman who killed him. A moment later Roses, Squall, Zappa and Takekawa find themselves alone in the room, with Squall lamenting that the phantom will not be paying for the execution as promised in the contract. Two weeks later, Zappa is on date when his phone begins to ring; Roses has organized a mission to oust the executioner Zappa has been hired to replace. Takekawa keeps Zappa's target, Damon, distracted in a lavish hotel room while he tears through a number of Wires, cyber foot soldiers from the Moon who are surfacing on Earth in a time where space-travel and cybernetics grow ever more commonplace. Zappa discovers Damon, partially transformed into a Wire himself, ready to assault Takekawa for spilling wine on his suit. Addressing himself as Damon's replacement, the decrepit assassin advises Zappa only that in their business men are always vulnerable to the darkness and must combat this with "a beacon of light that may never succumb to it." In another room Damon confronts Roses, who over a glass of wine explains that Damon's going "against the state" supersedes his perfect execution record. Damon warns Roses that Zappa is dangerous, then ponders if his life was worthwhile. Within moments a fountain of gore forces through his throat, before Roses concludes that everything in life is worthwhile. The agency's next client is Moon River, the last member of a lunar royal family which was overthrown. When River confesses that David now rules over the Moon and she seeks vengeance against him, Roses respectfully declines her as a client as the Moon is out of the American government's jurisdiction. Zappa however lobbies to take on River's case personally, as the encounter with Alice has left him curious about David. Zappa locates David's lunar palace, where he hacks through a number of more ferocious Wires guarding his halls. During his search, Zappa begins hearing David's voice beckon him, and at last encounters him perched upon his throne. David offers Zappa the opportunity to conquer Earth together, though he is refused. He then briefly puzzles Zappa by mentioning his love for soft-boiled eggs. While David accepts Zappa's insistence that they cross swords, he vanishes from battle before Zappa can execute him. Zappa and Roses apologize to River profusely for letting David escape, and as River must remain homeless, Zappa extends his own home to her in the meantime. After seeing David, Zappa experiences an odd dream. He encounters himself as a child, laying motionless as the Moon, Sun and Earth levitate in circles around him. Zappa hears his mother's voice, which prompts his child-self before him to awaken, and the objects floating above to disappear. A dining room appears and he sees himself as a child, eating eggs while lamenting that his mother did not cook them over-easy. Another plate of eggs sits by an empty seat at the table. Zappa deduces that this may be one of his memories. Stranger sights follow, such as a masked woman seeping a purple aura into the sky, himself and Moon River playing tag as children and a unicorn. Zappa comes to a dock where his child self is trying to rescue a drowning River, but the masked woman invades the scene and attacks Zappa himself. When Zappa wakes from his nightmare, he asks River about when they first met, though she denies they knew each other before she visited Roses' office.